Jeb Bush

The conventions are usually the most predictable part of an election year, but not this time. The outcomes of both parties’ conventions are already known, but the Republicans are nominating someone who makes a reality show of everything he touches. I’ll be watching from home, with a sick bucket nearby.

Ted Cruz is the Republican Party’s last chance to pull their nomination away from Trump, even though his policies and people skills are just as terrible, if not worse. After the bombings in Brussels, Cruz advocated for policing and monitoring of Muslim communities in the US. If that’s better than Trump’s plan to deny Muslims entry into the United States, that’s straining the definition of the word “better.”

While drawing this cartoon, I came across a phenomenon that might explain why Ted Cruz’s face is so unsettling: His teeth are rarely visible, make his face look like one of these carnival games:

Another data point for why is Ted Cruz’s so creepy: His teeth rarely show up in that black cavernous mouth. pic.twitter.com/2JiyRF7dma

We’re in the thick of primary season and the gaffes will increase from now until at least Super Tuesday. Prepare yourself by hoarding decent reading material until this whole election thing blows over.

It’s almost time for actual primary votes to be cast in the presidential campaign that began even before the last one ended in 2012. This is the fourth election I’ve endured since making the questionable decision to become an editorial cartoonist. These campaigns suck more and more oxygen from other important things, from down-ticket races to countless other issues that directly affect people’s lives. I’ll try to not be part of the problem in 2016.

Trump’s overtly bigoted campaign is just a spicier version of the hate the G.O.P. has been serving up for decades. And the base is eating it up to the dismay of the Republican establishment, who prefer to rile up the base just enough to enact tax cuts and dismantle social services.

We’re just weeks away from 2016, when the primaries begin and these monsters get even nastier. If that’s even possible.

After the attacks in Paris, the Republicans, along with some spineless Democrats, devolved into the same panicky imbeciles that turned this country bonkers after 9/11. That insanity is what led me to political cartooning 14 years ago, and to see it return all these years later is incredibly heartbreaking.

Thankfully, there’s been more pushback this time around, although it’s entirely absent from the GOP presidential field, who’s current frontrunner is a full-blown fascist.

With Trump leading Republican polls with a full-blown racist nationalist platform of slurs and insults, the rest of the field is following his lead and it’s ugly. Stripped of the dog whistles and coded language employed by Republicans for decades, the hatefulness of that party toward immigrants is now obvious to anyone, especially those who will be voting in the general election.

There’s finally a nuclear agreement with Iran, and of course it’s not going over so well with the warmonger set. The only alternative to this deal is another war. Anyone who says otherwise is either lying or incredibly dumb.

To claim a better deal was possible is to ignore that China and Russia exist and wouldn’t let sanctions last indefinitely. Unfortunately, saber-rattling makes for better GOP stump speeches than the practicalities of international relations.